Page 59 of Mad Dragon of Chaos

Shey snorted. “Yeah, I caught a hint of that in Bellcairn.”

“He approached me shortly after my first encounter with Zyros. He knew I had the power of another minor god.” As he spoke, he tapped his head.

Shey clutched his own forehead. “Why there? Wasn’t that painful?”

Tyche shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Only putting it in and taking it out. The culmination of our powers rests down here.” He waved his hand across his chest and stomach. “Either behind our hearts or near our stomachs. I didn’t want his powers and mine to merge, but I had to keep them safe on me. In my head seemed like a smart alternative.”

Shey closed the distance between them, grabbed Tyche’s head gently, and kissed the side. “Just the idea of it scares me.”

“Kaes scares me, but becoming like Zyros scared me more. Kaes pressed me to merge those stolen powers with my own. He told me this was my chance to rise to become a major god. To take on Zyros and stop her slaughter.” Tyche held his empty hands out in front of him, slowly curling his fingers in. “I have no illusions about my abilities. I’m not a fighter. Never have been. My ability to remain alive this long has been luck.” His eyes snapped up to Shey’s face, his lips trembling. “Pure luck.”

“And brains. You’re smart. Resourceful. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“If I were so smart, I would have chucked Wu’s powers into his shrine when I learned that was a way of locking them away,” Tyche muttered.

“Wu?”

Tyche wandered to the railing and sat on it. “Wu, God of Accidents. Nice guy. A bit of a klutz.”

Shey smirked and tilted his head so that it was in Tyche’s line of sight. “You mean a bit accident-prone.”

Tyche chuckled for the first time. “The man could trip on air while walking, but he could also make his magic work for him. A mother accidentally made too many sweet buns, and she gave him one. Or a rabbit running from a fox slips and accidentally lands in his trap.”

“I’ve seen your luck run like that.”

Tyche hummed. “True. I think that’s why we got along so well. There was a definite art to controlling our magic that others didn’t quite understand. If gods and goddesses weren’t so troublesome, I think we could have been friends.”

“Do you think that’s why you held on to his powers?”

Tyche snorted and stared at Shey as if he were insane. “Now you think too highly of me. I kept them out of fear. If I found myself in a desperate spot, I could merge his with mine to escape Zyros. And later, the excuse was to protect myself from Kaes and any of the other major gods.”

Shey could feel where the story was building to. The point where he’d been left with no choice.

“And then they murdered Yesuntei.”

Tyche bent his head and covered his face with both hands. He scrubbed his hands back and forth several times as if to clear his thoughts. “Yesuntei. She survived Zyros only to die in that fucking place.” He dropped his hands to his legs with a loud slap. “The plan had always been to take her sarira to Brightspire and the protection of her temple. And I thought, maybe, I could finally put Wu’s powers to rest as well.”

“Do you think Cirina appeared when she did because of Kaes?”

“Yes. No. Maybe? I wouldn’t put it past him, but Cirina was rarely far from her sister. I wouldn’t put it past him to force my hand, expecting me to merge Yesuntei’s powers with my own.”

Shey glared at a patch of golden light thrown down onto the marble floor from the bedroom. “I don’t understand. Why would he want you to take on the goddess’s power? Why didn’t he try to take it from you for himself?”

Tyche grinned at him. “Why would he? He’s a major god. The powers of the minor gods are a raindrop compared to their ocean of magic. I don’t pretend to understand the schemes of the major gods. Maybe he’s trying to stir up new problems between the major gods. Or he wants to challenge Caelan because he’s the new guy. Maybe he was fucking bored. Immortality is a really, really long time, and there’s only so much to watch on TV.”

Shey snorted and bumped his arm against Tyche’s. “Ridiculous. I guess he didn’t expect you to put Yesuntei’s sarira in a dragon.”

“Nope. But then again, neither did I.” The wind picked up and blew several strands of hair across Tyche’s face. He hooked them behind his ear and sighed. “I had my own powers and Wu’s tucked away. I was sure if I tried to hide Yesuntei’s inside me for safekeeping, they’d end up merging with mine. And with Wu’s up here…” He tapped his head.

“Bad things would have happened.”

Tyche grunted. “Mostly, I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen. The only thing I didn’t want was to become another Zyros. She slaughtered countless gods and hundreds of thousands of humans. She soaked Thia in blood for centuries before the godstones stopped her.”

“It was never going to happen.” Tyche looked up at Shey, who tapped the tip of his finger on his nose. “What I heard from Caelan, Zyros was a ruthless, bloodthirsty hunter as a human. The gods had nothing to do with that. She just used the powers to be more of that. Tyche, God of Luck, is nothing like that. He’s funny, kind, crafty, a bit crazy, and a connoisseur of coffee. At worst, you would have gone crazy and forced us all to convert from tea to coffee.”

“Think what a better world this would be if I did,” Tyche murmured.

“Or…should I call you the God of Chaos?”